This I guarantee. When the next report from Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, comes out, Wall Street is going to be very interested. And very worried.
But the timing of the report has changed: It’s not going to be in the next few days, as everyone expected.
There are a number of investigations going on involving the 2016 presidential election, so I don’t blame you for being confused. Probably the most important one is looking into bias inside the FBI and other agencies in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Horowitz was supposed to testify before the House Oversight Committee on May 8 and perhaps discuss his latest report.
But on April 23, the Oversight Committee quietly withdrew Horowitz’s invitation to testify. In the letter to Horowitz, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said, “It is of the utmost importance that your review be as fulsome, complete and unimpeded as possible.” Gowdy said he’d await further updates on the status of Horowitz’s probe before rescheduling.
“The committee intends to schedule a hearing for as close to the day the report is finalized as practicable,” Gowdy’s letter said.
It’s pretty clear that Horowitz is going to find some kind of bias in the way the FBI and other agencies treated investigations of Clinton’s e-mail mess (as I told you in columns way back when all this was happening). Probably a lot of bias.
And it is becoming even clearer that two FBI agents — cheating lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — might be cooperating with investigators.
If Horowitz condemns the FBI and others, that won’t be a bombshell for Wall Street and the markets. In fact, anything that helps President Trump would be good in the eyes of investors because Trump, so far, has been good for stocks.
But the Democrats are likely to go harder after Trump in advance of the IG’s report — and Wall Street won’t like that.
We are headed for a free-for-all, constitutional crisis in Washington. And Wall Street doesn’t like chaos.
When will the chaos hit the markets?
It’s hard for Washington to get anything done in the summer. I’m guessing this all hits the fan in the early fall.